


Rumours

by luvanderwon



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Ghislain is a pirate, Luvander is a pirate husband, M/M, Mad Desert King Ivory, Post-Canon Fix-It, Raphael is a poetic disaster, post-steelhands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/pseuds/luvanderwon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were a lot of good things to be said for being a pirate husband, but winter was not one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rumours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [capncrystal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capncrystal/gifts).



> Post-Steelhands festivebastion fic for [capncrystal](http://archiveofourown.org/users/capncrystal). 
> 
> Dear Crystal, your three prompts left me incapable of choosing between them, so I used them all. Sorry not sorry. It was an absolute delight to write this for you and I hope you enjoy it. Happy holidays! 
> 
> This story is set post-Steelhands and so references one or two canonical character deaths. Also **trigger warning** for mild discussions / descriptions of PTSD. 
> 
> It is also loosely compliant with both [Lessons in Flying](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5130200/chapters/11804159) and [Found Along The Way](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3931006) because I am nothing if not narcissistic. **This story is not dependent on those two fics** , however, and can be read without any knowledge of them!

i.

There were a lot of good things to be said for being a pirate husband, but winter was not one of them. Luvander had never relished the cold. It made his nose turn entirely the wrong shade of pink, not at all his tone, and layers made him feel bulky and uncomfortable, like he couldn't move his limbs properly all bound up in fabric – and not in the sexy way, either, which was a crying shame. Not to mention the way the elements wreaked havoc with his hair – and that was on land. He'd had a clever hat for flying, although the necessity of showering the instant they landed after a raid made it somewhat less of a trauma.

Everything that Luvander hated about winter, he discovered, he hated ten times more out on the open sea.

“Alright there, princess,” Ghislain rumbled, lumbering up beside him looking like something filthily robust and horribly fit for survival in the wilderness, which, of course, he was. And which he insisted on pointing out that the sea between Volstov and Xi'An was not, however much Luvander liked to list the similarities: exposure to the elements, isolation from the macrocosm, completely inadequate shelter... at which point Ghislain would inevitably interrupt, standing upwind and spreading his arms and asking just what, exactly, Luvander thought he was, thank you very much.

“I'm cold,” Luvander complained, hunching his shoulders in the enormous fleece blanket that Ghislain bartered for last time they docked on the Pirate's Isle and visited the markets. Ironically, the Pirate's Isle was the last place in the ocean where you were likely to fall foul of opportunistic buccaneers. Ghislain had explained the code to him so many times Luvander could recite it in his sleep. Open sea was open game, ports were fine pickings and fair fights, but anyone who touched a thing they hadn't docked with on Pirate's Isle would lose a hand, unless it had been bartered for. There were grisly tales of duels of honour over whether something had truly been bartered or not. Luvander had thought it all very romantic and dashing until the first time Ghislain took him ashore, when all of a sudden it made him feel anxious and sick.

Ghislain heaved himself into the hammock next to Luvander, and rubbed his shoulders vigorously through the fleece with his weathered, rope-worn hands. Luvander rolled sideways and clambered into his lap. The hammock rocked creakily. “Careful there,” Ghislain murmured, and then his mouth found Luv's neck, stubble rough and ready against his skin, smooth on one side and puckered on the other. Ghislain nuzzled the flicker of exposed flesh above the crest of Luvander's Kiril silk scarf (looted from a fat-bellied merchantman wallowing low in the water twenty miles off Cheongju three months back).

“Careful yourself,” Luvander grumbled, fidgeting his fingers through the laces at the front of Ghislain's shirt, twitching the plackets aside and wiggling them under the sturdy, dry cotton. “Mm,” he nodded, approvingly, and Ghislain's teeth nipped, his nose nudging at Luvander's jaw. “Warm. Good.”

“Are you having regrets again, poppet,” Ghislain asked in a low, treacly hum. His hands were on Luvander's hips, and Luv knew his feet must be braced against the floor to stop the hammock from bouncing and tugging precariously at its fastenings. They didn't often get frisky in there. It was too messy, and one time Luvander got a fearful backache after they attempted it. “Are you wishing you'd stayed snug on the Rue in your pretty little shop with its fireplace and proper bed and dubious lack of draughts even in that rotten old back room?” Ghislain mouthed the words along the line of Luvander's jawbone, a warm, spiced tickle of pretend concern. He was a smug motherfucker. He knew any regrets Luvander might entertain were brief, winter-flavoured, and easily assuaged with a shiny plundered gift or a generous foray into his pants. In fact, his regrets were usually calculated and designed to achieve exactly one of those ends.

“What if I am,” Luvander pouted, right on cue. Ghislain smirked, slid one of his enormous, callused palms up Luvander's waist from his hip and brought it up to cup the back of his head, cradled the base of his skull and tangled his fingers there like a knot of paper chains. He found Luvander's mouth with his own and kissed him soft and smooth. Luvander's stomach jolted like he'd just downed a shot of warm, honeyed rum. Damn it. Every time.

 

ii.

“Where are we bound, anyway?” Luvander asked cosily, his head cushioned on the surprisingly soft pillow of Ghislain's shoulder. He had the most excellent shoulders, that man, Luvander thought appreciatively, rubbing his cheek a little against the warm comfort of familiar, salty skin over impressively honed muscle. It was amazing Ivory hadn't had all sorts of problems existing around Ghislain.

“Sou'sou'east,” Ghislain grunted. Sex made him sleepy, a fact which Luvander hadn't known before that night when he had finally agreed to visit Ghislain's boat for the first time. Over a year ago, now, after months of being unwittingly wooed with stolen treasure and thinly-coded pigeon-delivered letters; after the unexpected gift of Raphael had been rehabilitated to civilian life, set up with his bookshop and soothed through the nights of sobbing over coming home to find the person he'd come home for wasn't there. Luvander had been good at mopping that up.

And eventually, when Raphael had gone through the five stages of grief, had finished breaking down in public, getting himself shamefully wasted and breaking down in public a bit more, fucking his way through several weeks at the 'Fans and breaking down on the shoulders of whores; once the dust of his misery had settled into a sand-art image of composing mournful sonnets and selling battered old books to giggling hero-worshippers and poor 'Versity students... that's when Luvander had finally accepted Ghislain's offer of a tour of the boat.

It had gone down as well as he had, after dinner on deck and two glasses of Ke'Han wine.

“What's south of south east?” he frowned, now, trying to summon the maps in his head. Often Luvander navigated for Ghislain – he had one keen eye and a head for direction, but he wasn't an expert yet, and without the charts rolled out in front of him he struggled, sometimes.

“Dunno,” Ghislain sighed, and shifted, tucking Luvander closer, knotting their fingers together over his heart like a mooring. “Don't know anyone who's been out that way.”

“So,” Luvander pressed his cold nose against his husband's neck, “why are we doing it? Why are you taking me out into uncharted territory?”

“So you can chart it, my darling,” Ghislain promised, bringing their hands up to his face and pressing the flotsam of a kiss against Luvander's knuckles. “Make a name for yourself as the most multi-talented man that ever was: airman, pioneering milliner, businessman, esteemed flirt, pirate husband and now courageous cartographer to boot.”

Luvander pursed his lips. “I am a man of many skills,” he agreed, softly. “You forgot dashing aesthete, though, and sexual deviant with incredible self-belief when it comes to accepting dick-shaped challenges.”

“Mm,” Ghislain murmured, which translated to _that sounded like something Niall would have said._ They don't talk about Niall. 

“Why are we really going south-south-east though,” Luvander whispered, rubbing the tip of his nose along Ghislain's jugular. He smelled like spices and pilfered silver, salt and polished wood. 

“Heard some rumours,” he admitted, evasively, turning his face to press a briny kiss to Luvander's forehead. “Go to sleep, precious.” 

The hammock rocked like a gentle, indefinite promise.

 

iii.

Once, Ghislain had fucked him up against the wall of their cabin, which had been awkward because he was too tall and the wooden walls were thin, but they'd been at anchor and none of the crew were on board. Another time, he'd had Luvander bent over a barrel of rum, which had been appropriate given they'd both been tipsy. And that had been quite an achievement in Ghislain's case since not much got that man even marginally inebriated, except as it turned out rum from Tado. Who knew the Tadoese brewed it so rich and potent.

Luvander was considering writing a Pirate Husband Memoir listing all the fascinating places he hadn't seen because they'd been too distracted with having post-raid sex, or because Ghislain had swept him up on the beach in a sandy, bruising kiss, and they'd made love in the dunes. (Alright, that was only the one time, but it had been romantic – if he ignored the itchiness and the sand in places sand should never go). Niall, never much of a reader, would have loved a book like that.

Thinking about Niall made him ache, though, with a pinch of guilt and a pound of sadness. Most of the time, he had made his peace with the bulbous ache of grief over Niall's death and the peppery twinge which still felt, sometimes, like Luvander was cheating on his lost lover when he went to bed with his live one. Most of the time, he knew where those feelings belonged and he kept them there, safely tucked away in their own pirate treasure chest; seldom opened but allowed to take up their space in the hold of his heart. Occasionally, though, they sneaked out and tripped him up with a spasm in his belly like missing the last step on a ladder.

He knew Niall would have been proud, if jealous; impressed, if envious. Sometimes, Luvander could hear the lewd and awful and hilarious comments which would have spilled over Niall's lips, about Ghislain being enormous, about Luvander being a tiny fragile fairy who needed handling with care (not true, Luvander would have protested, futilely). Inappropriate questions about whether Ghislain's penis was better represented by an aubergine or an oversized banana. He would have bought Luvander the biggest jars of lube he could find, hundreds of them; would have filled Luv's room with them and then asked him very seriously if he had enough, whether he needed to restock yet. He'd have been overly, loudly, publicly concerned about whether Luvander should be _walking_ today if he'd spent the night with Ghislain, perhaps he needed carrying down the stairs, was he really not broken or bruised? Sometimes, when he thought about Niall, Luvander could hear all of this and more, and sometimes it made him smile and other times snatched at his heart like a hungry dog. 

Perhaps he would write that Pirate Husband Memoir, he thought, perched at the prow and watching the grey, drizzly horizon unfold endlessly ahead. Perhaps he would write it, and dedicate it to Niall, a fallen comrade lost to the ashes of Lapis, who'd had a heart the size of the Basquiat and a dick like one of its spires. Niall would have liked that.

 

iv.

South-south-east was not warmer than anywhere else they had sailed, to Luvander's hunched and bitter disappointment. He felt like a thread worn thin this winter, displaced and ready to snap under the least pressure. He'd been praying that they wouldn't engage another ship or raid a port any time soon. He always stayed on board, Ghislain tucking him up in their cabin with fierce kisses and a reminder that he was made of steel before he went out to wreak mountainous havoc, taking prizes and precious things, but never prisoners. Luvander always felt sick until he was back.

The first time he'd bounded in bloody and grinning, and swept him up, right off his feet, for a fierce, laughing kiss, Luvander had cried. He'd toughened up since then – at least outwardly – swapped his tears for sea water and wound himself in the hempen cloak of nautical stoicism, but he didn't think he could cope with it this winter. He was too sore in his bones already.

They spent three days rollicking through a storm which not even Ghislain had been able to predict, Maggie the ship's cat skulking under the bench in the kitchen. She'd been named for Magoughin because she had a purr as loud as his laugh, and because Ghislain missed him.

Luvander's hair was a ruination by the time the clouds finally blew themselves apart. His legs hurt with bracing himself against the roll of the ship, his eyes were sore from squinting at the charts, and the queasiness that came with a rough sea was finally catching up with him. When Ghislain appeared in the doorway of the Master's cabin he found Luvander was slumped over the carpenter's table, his maps in a scrunched huddle under his face, cartographer's tools spilling haphazardly everywhere. “Land, ho,” he grinned, and Luvander groaned.

“Fucking finally.” 

It was a parched and needy land when they reached it. Hostile, but not in the way so many of the places they hit were hostile – no threatening inhabitants or defensive and ill-equipped fisherfolk. Just sand, cold and dry, for miles ahead – like the whole island was one endless beach.

“Is this land, or just a sand bar?” Luvander asked, tasting grit and cold air. 

“You tell me, Sailing Master,” Ghislain raised an eyebrow. 

“I'm not your Sailing Master,” Luvander snapped. He was hungry, and cold, and disappointed. 

“It's land alright,” Yuto, the Quarter Master Ghislain had picked up in Jikji, who spoke fluent Ke'Han and excellent Volstovic, as well as a smattering of the Seonese dialect, and was astonishingly capable at keeping the rest of the crew in line despite being at least a head shorter than the shortest of them. He pointed north-east. “You don't get trees rooting on sand bars.” 

Ahead of Yuto's finger was a small outcrop of incongruous palm trees, bent and misshapen like witches' fingers, the scrubby remnants of their leaves tickling at the sand as if they thought folding double would protect them from the wind. “What the fuck,” Ghislain frowned eloquently, then squared his magnificent shoulders and started walking.

“You only get mirages in the heat, right?” Luvander muttered, folding his arms close around his chest, because walking towards the trees meant walking directly into the line of the wind, which was bracing and bitter and laced with grains of the sand they were stumbling through. It felt a bit like being flayed in the face. “This had better not be a mirage.”

It wasn't a mirage. What the trees were, other than improbable and malnourished, was the beginning of a thin trail of rocks and thorny, immortal plants, which apparently could survive on nothing but sand and gales. “Bastion, no wonder no one's ever sailed out here,” Luvander gripped his own elbows to hunch his coat – a practical, leather thing which wasn't at all stylish and was definitely too large, but it was warm and useful and, Ghislain said, made him look less like a pretty peacock target if they ever found themselves in a fight. “There's nothing to sail out here for. No one could live here, could they? What would you eat?”

“We've got a way to go before we can answer that question,” Yuto said. “Boss? Are we following this trail?”

“May as well,” Ghislain shrugged. He narrowed his eyes up the meandering route of rubble and brittle, hardy, long-suffering plant life. “If there's anything on this spit, it'll be this way.”

Luvander sighed, had a moment of actual, genuine regret and a stabbing wound of homesickness for Thremedon and the bustling laughter of the Rue, for Raphael stringing up Midwinter decorations in the window of his bookshop opposite; for the cosy, crackling comforts of a fire in the grate and a plate of buttered toast whilst sitting in a snug armchair in his pyjamas.

Then, he gathered his breath and his will and his limbs and trailed purposefully in the wake of his husband, his captain, and his heart.

 

v.

It took them three days to hit anything resembling life on the barren waste of sand that eventually trickled dismally into mud, and finally a few ramshackle huts that didn't look like they'd been inhabited for years. The first night, Luvander had curled up under Ghislain's preposterous pirate cape on one side of his great hulking warmth, and Yuto on the other, and for once he hadn't minded sharing his husband's body heat with someone else. The second night, they availed themselves of one of those broken down wooden shacks to shelter from the wind, which had not lessened at all as they'd trailed further inland.

On the third day, they found a camp.

It was bleak and unwelcoming. A scrubby crowd of dirty nomad children scattered like birds when they came in sight, leaving only the scratch marks of some illegible game in the sandy-flecked soil. Yuto went forward ahead of Ghislain and Luvander, as there was always more chance of his being understood than anyone else. Luvander clutched a bit at Ghislain's sleeve. “They're not likely to have weapons, are they?” he whispered, anxiously.

“If they do, you can hide behind me,” Ghislain smirked, “there's not going to be many of them, reckon I could take them out with one hand behind my back, stowing you there'll be no trouble.”

Luvander swallowed something dry and cloudy, edging fractionally closer. This camp did not look remotely like the sort of place that would be armed, not to mention the fact that they were off the map and days from anywhere. Still, the thought that they could be walking into a fight felt like going down stairs in the dark.

“Don't you worry,” Ghislain said soothingly, “anyone threatens you they'll have me to deal with, and I don't take kindly to folk upsetting any of my treasure, you know that.”

Fortunately, he wasn't required to act on that promise. Yuto spoke to a man and two women from the camp in a language which seemed predominantly made up of wide-armed gestures, finger-wiggling insinuations and bizarre charades. “Guess they don't even speak Seonese out here,” Ghislain murmured bracingly, wrapping one of his arms around Luvander's shoulders and keeping him tucked in close.

“We are in the middle of bastion fucking nowhere,” Luvander reminded him, “what did you expect?”

Yuto waved them over. The women and the man looked alarmed but stoic, their faces open like bold, stark canvases giving nothing away. They were built taller and broader than the Ke'Han, but not so tall or broad as the Old Ramanthe, or the Volstovic who bore that blood. There were furs around their shoulders and necks, but their worn, work-rough hands and forearms were bare.

“These people are wood traders,” Yuto explained, “from up north of here. I think. They are on their way home.”

“And?” Ghislain raised his scarred eyebrow and for a moment, Luvander felt a sharp pull behind his kidneys at the realisation that there was something his husband had shared with Yuto and not, apparently, with him.

“Yes,” Yuto nodded. “It was what you wanted.”

He bowed to the woodswomen and the woodsman, the politely practiced half-bow Luvander had seen him use among the Ke'Han and the Seonese when they'd been negotiating. The traders did not return the courtesy, but Yuto did not seem put out about that.

“Which way?” Ghislain asked.

Yuto pointed south.

 

vi.

“How in the fuck,” Luvander growled, trying in vain to keep blood flowing to his fingers. South wasn't warmer either. “Isn't south where the sun comes from? Ghislain this is not what I married you for, where are my balmy beaches and buried treasure? Ghislaaaiiinnnn.”

“It is a bit nippy,” Ghislain agreed.

South of the point where they'd met the wood traders was colder, starker, and windier than ever. Sand dunes rolled and piled over one another, but not quite like the desert, or so Yuto informed them. He claimed it was closer to moorland, but sandy. “So, a desert moor,” Luvander had grunted balefully. “Great. Just where I always wanted to die.”

They had been walking for hours, and the evening was drawing her inky cloak across the dull grey sun, long fingers smudging the light. The landscape grew more and more eerie as everything muted itself into monochromatic shadows. Luvander stumbled after Ghislain and Yuto, burrowed his chilly fingers under Ghislain's cape for his hand, and took comfort from the familiar scrape of his calluses and the metallic warmth of his wedding ring. “Babe,” Ghislain stopped suddenly, frowning down at him and reeling him closer. “You should have said you were this cold, your fingers are like ice. C'mere.”

“What's that noise?” Luvander squawked, alarm scaling the ladder of his ribcage and setting up home in his heart, thumping angrily. “Can you hear that? Are we going to die here?”

“Shh,” Ghislain nestled him close against the bulwark of his chest, cupped his face against his own waistcoat. Luvander breathed in the warm, marine scent of him, all tattoo ink and sea spray, cotton and canvas and spiced chocolate and gold. Ghislain had his hand over Luvander's outer ear, but it wasn't enough – he could still hear the whispering wail of a hollow, incomplete piano weeping over the sand in the dusk.

 

vii.

Ivory didn't recognise them.

He snarled like a feral cat when Ghislain approached, crouched over his strangely crafted piano in a dip between dunes, sheltered from the omnipresent wind, a pale waif of a wild thing cut from angles and anger. Ghislain moved slowly, warily, as if approaching a frightened baby which, Luvander thought from where he watched with Yuto, Ivory sort of seemed like he was. His throat was tight and nauseous, his skin prickling all over with cold, damp sweat. Luvander didn't know where Ghislain kept hearing rumours, but he was glad Adamo didn't have access to that source.

Ghislain closed the gap steadily, his arms loose at his sides and his gaze consistently on the taut figure that had once been their – well, Luvander wasn't bold enough to say friend, but – fellow. Ivory glared at him, unblinking, and when Ghislain said his name in that low, quiet hum he used on Maggie when she was spitting mad, Ivory hissed.

“Ivory,” Ghislain said again, soft like washed cotton. “I'm not going to touch your piano.”

Yuto shot Luvander a raised eyebrow. The piano was a contraption of wood, metal, and what looked like bone – how it had made any music at all was beyond them. Unless that sound had been Ivory singing in some woeful caterwaul which, Luvander reasoned, wasn't entirely unlikely. He had always been pale as a ghost and about as scary, it seemed reasonable that he'd make a noise like a banshee as well.

“Ivory,” Ghislain repeated, and held his hands out, palms up.

“No,” Ivory said, and his voice was the cracked ribbon of buckled dragon metal, vocal chords scratching against a throat in search of sounds it had half forgotten it knew how to make. “No, I won't.”

“You won't what?” Ghislain asked.

“No,” Ivory shook his head like a dog emerging from water. His hair was long and straggly and paler than ever, or perhaps that was the dusk, Luvander wasn't sure. It hung in sad loops that snagged on the shoulders of the grubby fur around his neck – the same style as the wood traders had worn. They must have been trading with Ivory, then. Not for the first time, Luvander wondered at the nature of whatever rumours Ghislain had picked up. A mad white desert ghost? A mad white desert ghost who wore unwashed furs and made the carcass of an instrument moan after dark?

No, no, that sounded too much like Niall again. Luvander had to close his eyes for a moment. If there were rumours about Niall, he thought uncharitably with a wrench in his gut, would Ghislain follow those, too?

“May I see?” Ghislain was asking Ivory now, indicating the piano.

Ivory prowled around it, a beast circling its territory, cocked his head to the side and then nodded, once, sharp and beady. He reminded Luvander of Yesfir when she'd caught sight of something a half second before he had himself. The wound in his chest reopened, briefly. There wasn't enough scar tissue in any one body to smooth over the pain of losing his girl.

“I built her,” Ivory was saying to Ghislain, stroking the top of the piano, bending over it and crooning, making his mouth into little high kissing sounds, chirruping. “I built her from her,” he announced, “she broke and I took her, I turned her into something beautiful again.”

Luvander blinked.

“Is he mad?” Yuto whispered, sounding – for the first time since Luvander had met him – frightened.

“Not,” Luvander swallowed, and tasted sand and salt and sadness, “not any more than the rest of the airmen.”

“That's no comfort,” Yuto grumbled.

“He seems a little bit...” Luvander bit his lip, searched through the wreckage of his brain for the right word, but everything felt backwards and muddled just now; the realisation of what Ivory had just said catching up to the realisation that _this_ was _Ivory_ , alive, and making him spin. “He seems slightly... unhinged.” 

“Who was she,” Ghislain was asking, “before you rebuilt her?”

Ivory looked at him, and then at the piano, running the tip of one finger lovingly along the spine of her keys. “Cassiopeia,” he whispered, the five syllables a breezy caress that made Luvander's whole body shiver. He felt sick, and when Ivory added in a voice like a prayer and a promise “she sings for Raphael,” his whole stomach contracted like he'd been punched.

 

viii.

Getting him back to the boat was less of a struggle than Luvander had anticipated – although this was largely owing to Ghislain knocking Ivory out. He didn't mean to, exactly, but when he said something about being able to bring Ivory to Raphael if he wanted and Ivory flew at him teeth and claws and rage, it just sort of... happened.

Luvander wasn't going to pretend he wasn't terrified about what Ivory would do when he woke up.

He was currently terrified about a lot of other things, too, like being on a boat with mad wailing desert ghostvory in the middle of the ocean, like how exactly that reunion between Raphael and this mad feral ghostvory was going to go down; like what Adamo was going to say when they had to tell him that mad with grief ghostvory had cannibalised the remains of his dragon to build a fucking piano in the desert.

“I have got so many questions,” he told Ghislain when they were alone, the gentle susurration of the sea lapping at the bowels of the ship a careful, warning backnote. Ghislain had carried Ivory all the way back through the sand, tossed over his shoulder like a sack. Somehow, the journey had taken half the time it had originally. Luvander didn't want to know whether that was witchery or the wind being with them this time, or just that they knew where they were going and ended up being faster.

“I know you have,” Ghislain replied gravely.

“Like, where do you even hear these rumours?” Luvander shook his head. “How many more rumours are there? What are you going to do with him, are you going to – look, I spent months with Raphael, okay, while you were out here being the pirate king, and just... this is going to be really destructive.”

“You think we should have left him there?” Ghislain eyebrowed.

“No, of course not,” Luvander scowled. “I just hope you've got some sort of plan.”

“I've always got a plan,” Ghislain said, the lie sliding as easily off his tongue as his cape off his shoulders, and Luvander knew that meant there was no plan at all. Ghislain never had a plan.

“He doesn't even know who we are,” he pointed out, quiet and suddenly choked like he'd caught a mouthful of ash. “How are we going to – he turned his girl into a piano, Ghislain, he's – he doesn't even know who we _are_.” 

The words crumbled and caught in the creases at the edge of his mouth, and then Luvander was crying, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and fighting to keep his breathing in time with the rhythm of the boat. “Why didn't you tell me,” he wept.

 

ix.

When Ivory woke from his Ghislainic concussion, Luvander was watching him, crouched in the doorway of the cabin where they'd stowed this latest treasure. Ivory's eyes flickered and he stared mutinously. “Good morning,” Luvander said, and Ivory stayed silent.

“We're on a boat,” he continued. “Taking you home.” 

Still, Ivory said nothing. He opened one hand like a fan in front of his face, stretching out his long, thin fingers, and Luvander realised that he'd never got an answer to what people ate on that pitiful belt of land south-south-east, and perhaps Ivory was so skeletal because he hadn't, either.

“Would you like something to eat?” 

He held out one of the wooden bowls Ghislain had carved not long after Luvander had married him, in that pretty little ceremony on the seashore of the northernmost Kiril Island, where such vows were legal and binding. He'd written to Raphael and told him about the pink and white flowers and the music and the way Ghislain had literally swept him off his feet to dance. Raphael had replied with a poetic sigh that rippled across his parchment about how fucking romantic it all sounded and what an absolute pair of shabby dickweed bastards they were for not inviting him. “Tell him we didn't want our honeymoon boat to stink like his seasick stomach,” Ghislain had dictated, holding Luvander against his stomach on the warm sand, the rumble of amusement in the bellows of his chest a comfortable caulk against the wave of homesickness that splashed on Luvander's shore at the thought of Raphael. Ghislain had whittled at Kiril Island wood and carved them a set of wedding bowls, one of which Luvander now offered to Ivory, bearing rice that Takeo, a Ke'Han farmboy whom Ghislain had rescued on one of his early raids, had cooked earlier.

Ivory took the bowl and sniffed the rice suspiciously. Luvander held out a spoon, but Ivory had already scraped some up in his fist and was eating it that way.

“You're more feral than ever,” Luvander told him, velvety amusement licking at the edge of the words. “Even Rook uses cutlery to eat.” 

“Fuck off,” Ivory snarled, and Luvander felt his face break into the first proper smile since they'd found him. 

“Now that's a familiar remark,” he nodded. “I'd missed that.” 

 

x.

He wasn't alright, of course.

Really, Luvander thought, there was no way to be  _alright_ after being an airman, much less being an airman who got blown completely off the map in that final battle, and survived in the actual fucking wilderness with nothing but a dead dragon and his memories to live on. It was precious little wonder Ivory had gone a bit mad, and really a pleasant surprise that he wasn't any worse. 

Ivory stayed in the tiny cabin for most of the journey home, which Luvander thought was sensible. On the one occasion he did venture out, the sight of the open sea seemed to alarm him, and later Luvander found him backed into a corner, shivering and growling high-pitched and furious when he came too close. “It's a lot, isn't it,” Luvander agreed, quietly. “A lot of space. A lot of water. That's why he couldn't hear you,” he added. “Too much space.”

“ _You_ heard,” Ivory said. Luvander had discovered that mentioning Raphael himself provoked possessive outrage and was liable to get you bitten and bloodied, but half obscure references seemed acceptable. Ivory seemed to know who he meant when Luvander mentioned _he_ or _him_ , and he looked poised, thoughtful; alert without being incensed. 

He found other touchstones, too. There was no piano, of course, on the ship, but they had chalk and charcoal, and between them he and Ivory drew the keys out on the wood floor of his cabin. Before they left, Luvander had salvaged a few pieces of Ivory's gory musical creation, the shards which still shone with Cassiopeia's scales, and wrapped them carefully in his scarf. He gave them to Ivory, who snatched and then crooned over them, and spent hours polishing them up and humming.

“At least he's not seasick,” Ghislain observed one afternoon, braced at the helm and keeping a weather eye on the clouds. 

“He's traumatised,” Luvander replied flatly, his arms folded as he leant against the railing. “He's delusional and frightened and no fucking wonder, because he's spent more than a year with the shell of his girl and nothing but grief for nourishment.”

“But he's not seasick,” Ghislain grinned. 

“If I'd wanted to be a psychiatrist,” Luvander started, darkly. 

“He doesn't need a psychiatrist,” Ghislain said. “What psychiatrist could possibly understand the loss of Cassiopeia, the memory of that battle, the belief that his lover was probably dead but the lack of certainty on that score? He doesn't need a psychiatrist. He needs us.” 

Luvander sighed, and watched the horizon blurring and dancing with the darkening afternoon sky. Sailing back to Thremedon in December felt like sailing back through time, to another winter. “I saw a Margrave,” he admitted, “right after we came back. Margrave Clemene. She was supposed to help with the, with... all that.”

“And?”

“She did her best,” Luvander sighed, remembering the day he'd thrown his chair across the Margrave Clemene's rooms, and gone down on his knees sobbing on her hearthrug. “But in the end, I think what helped most was Raphael.” 

“Good,” Ghislain nodded. “We're going the right way, then.” 

 

xi.

They kept Ivory on the boat and sent Takeo to fetch Adamo, and Sofie, the scrap of Molly-bred toughstuff Ghislain had caught stowing away in the summer and decided to train up as a miniature pirate queen, with a letter to Raphael. Luvander paced the decks, anxious and aching and glad to be home but terrified of what being home meant. He needed to visit his shop, needed to make sure Holly was okay and that turnover was acceptable and suss out what fashions had changed and work on some new designs for the spring season. Ghislain had promised they'd stay a while.

Raphael got there first. He looked good, healthier than when they'd last seen him. His hair was still streaked with grey but it was thicker, shinier. The scar on the side of his mouth was less noticeable, or maybe that was because he was smiling so wide and so welcoming when he wrapped Luvander up in one of his parchment and candle wax hugs. “You're a vile traitor,” he hummed warmly, “getting hitched without me, stealing yourself a pirate husband, you filthy scoundrel. I thought we had something special.”

“Darling, you'll always be special to me,” Luvander promised. 

“Think of the children,” Raphael scolded. 

“I know,” Luvander sighed, “I am a monster, but I could never marry a mistress, it's just not done.”

“You have been the ruination of me,” Raphael wailed into his hair. 

“Yes, well,” Luvander gave him a squeeze, “I've been the ruination of many a finer fellow than yourself, don't give yourself graces my dear. Also,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “there's something I need to tell you.” 

Raphael gasped. “Are you pregnant?”

“Not exactly,” Luvander grimaced, “but we are, um. Bearing live cargo.” 

“I hate to break up the reunion party, lads,” Adamo interrupted sonorously from the gangplank, in a voice which implied he hated no such thing. “I'm here to see the captain.” 

“Captain's indisposed,” Raphael said cheekily, and indicated Luvander with a flourish, “care for a word with his wife?”

Adamo narrowed his eyes at Luvander, who smirked and gave a bow, complete with a foppish loop of his wedding hand so Adamo couldn't miss the glint of looted gold on his third finger. “Oh, sweet fuckery,” he breathed, and Raphael giggled. “That's horrifying.”

“How charming you are,” Luvander raised an eyebrow, “as ever. No need to be jealous just because no one with such refined taste as me would ever marry you, or because I now technically outrank you by association. My man is this way,” he declared, escaping Raphael's embrace at last and leading them towards the back of the boat. 

“We found something special,” Ghislain announced by way of a greeting when they appeared in his doorway. 

“Did you bring the chief a Kiril Island dancing girl,” Raphael asked, “because I have to inform you that he's got himself an angry sweetheart these days who won't take kindly to that, so I'll have to step in and take her off your hands instead. Such a shame.” 

“No, actually, the dancing girl is all for you,” Luvander said innocently. “We just thought Adamo might like to hear the story about how we found her.” 

“ _You_ don't have a sweetheart, I hope,” Ghislain levelled Raphael with one of his fierce captain stares, and for a moment Luvander wanted to kick everyone else out and ravish him, because there was nothing quite like pirate husband authority face to get his knickers in a twist. 

“Moi?” Raphael put a hand to his heart and heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Only Luvander here, who promised so many times to make an honest man of me but has spurned me for some pirate floozy after all.”

“No, he doesn't,” Adamo cut in, looking suspicious. “Tell me about this dancing wench then, Ghislain.” 

“Luvander's pregnant,” Raphael said brightly. 

For a moment, there was silence in Ghislain and Luvander's cabin. Adamo frowned at Luvander, Raphael looked smug and giggly, and Ghislain's face was comically confused. Then, “tit,” Luvander hissed, elbowing Raphael in the side. “Shut up.”

“We'll talk about this later,” Ghislain pointed at Luvander, who offered him an extravagant salute, merrily misinterpreting _talk_ in a fashion entirely inappropriate given that he was standing next to his former commanding officer. “No, what we found wasn't dancing, or a girl. It's Ivory.” 

 

xii.

“You need lessons in breaking news gently,” Luvander scolded Ghislain affectionately, wrapped up in the sturdy blanket of his arms in the disconcertingly stable nest of his bed above the Yesfir hat shop. After a ten-month at sea, it felt brilliant and strange to be in a bed which wasn't shifting with the tide; in a room which wasn't softly creaking with the wind. 

“Nah,” Ghislain disagreed on a comfortable sigh, and stretched out his legs against the mattress. 

“I thought Raphael was going to punch you.” 

“So did I, for a minute,” Ghislain chuckled. “Good job he saved that for someone else, eh?” 

Raphael had punched Ivory, but with his mouth, on Ivory's mouth, his fists bunched in the long (now clean, thanks to Luvander) scrag of his hair. There had been a moment when Luvander had actually thought that Ivory was going to fight him off and stab him with whatever he could lay his hands on – probably that scrap of dragon scale he'd been nursing when they'd opened the door. Only then Ivory visibly relaxed, every taut line of his body going limp except his fingers, which flexed and clung to the back of Raphael's shirt, and a tiny, muffled whimper bled out of his lips. Raphael caught that up in his mouth, and then kissed Ivory's face all over, every inch of it, humming and crying and laughing and bringing one hand round to brush Ivory's hair out of the way and stroke down the line of his jaw.

“Not going to lie,” Luvander purred, “but if he'd punched you the way he punched Ivory I would have had _words_.” 

“Mmm,” Ghislain vibrated, running his hand down Luvander's arm and tugging him closer, pulling him half on top of his own chest, Luvander's leg hooked over his hips. “I do love it when you get all grabby like that.” 

“Grabby,” Luvander huffed, grabbing a fistful of Ghislain's hair. “I'll give you grabby.” 

“Please do,” Ghislain grinned, and then Luvander had to kiss him, suckle that smug, wolfish look off his face, nibble at his lower lip until Ghislain was sighing and shifting underneath him like his ship at the turn of the tide. His hands skated down Luvander's sides and cupped his hips, thumbs rubbing tiny sigils against the streak of skin above the waistband of his pyjamas. 

“Ghislain,” Luvander stopped, suddenly, put his face in his husband's neck and sighed. It was warm and snug in his bed, warmer than he'd been since summer had ended. “Do you think there'll be any more rumours.” 

“Who knows,” Ghislain half shrugged, burying his mouth in Luv's hair. 

“Will you follow them if there are?” 

“Will you follow me if I do?” 

“Touché,” Luvander smiled, and shaped his lips into a dry, sketchy kiss in the dip of Ghislain's collarbone. “I'll follow you anywhere.” There was an appreciative murmur of silence, and then he gathered his courage to ask: “if there are rumours, though... more rumours, I mean... if there are, anyway, do you think. Do you think they could be...” he trailed off, the words stuck like a fish bone in the back of his throat. 

“No, Luv,” Ghislain confessed, quietly, rubbing his freshly-shaven cheek against the top of Luvander's head. “No, I know they won't be. You know that, too.” 

Luvander did know that. He knew Niall was dead. There was no way anyone could have survived the fireball that Erdeni had gone down as, even if he hadn't witnessed the charred carcass of her remains when it had petered out in a spit of self-consuming flame. There hadn't been a body. There had barely been the bones of a dragon, and metal wasn't supposed to burn like that.

“I know,” he nodded., feeling his heart beat up high in his throat. 

“I love you,” Ghislain whispered, finding Luv's hand and lacing their fingers together. They didn't say it often, because Luvander struggled with genuine affection, and Ghislain was a quiet, secretive sort when it came to emotions. 

Luvander nestled himself closer and breathed out, closed his eyes and tightened his fingers in Ghislain's. “I love you too,” he whispered, throatily. Then, because it was important and it wasn't about him, “will Ivory be okay now?”

“He's with Raphael,” Ghislain reminded him. “I can't think of anything else that could even begin to mend the broken bits. Can you?” 

“That Raphael,” Luvander agreed, “he is excellent therapy.” 

“What's this about you being pregnant, though,” Ghislain rumbled, and his arm went tight around Luvander's waist again, pressing their bodies closer together and leaning in to nip his sharp teeth at Luvander's neck. “Have you been keeping secrets from me, husband?” 

“That's rich,” Luvander gasped against the scrape of Ghislain's mouth, and arched involuntarily against him. “Afraid you're going to have to work a bit harder than that for the answers though.” 


End file.
